[ On Thursday, February 1, 2001 at 20:04:55 (-0700), Rick Kelly wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: README: nawk vs. gawk
>
> Greg A. Woods said:
>
> >There is only "One True Awk", which in this thread is called 'nawk'.
>
> However, nawk, if it is the aka "research awk" from AT&T will cause
AT&T's "New Awk", aka 'nawk' on most AT&T operating systems available
for the past decade and a half, is just an older version of "The One
True Awk".
To quote from <URL:http://plan9.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/>:
* Source for the one true awk, updated [...]
:-)
> config to blow up on SunOS 4.1.4.
as in "/usr/sbin/config"? I didn't even know it used awk!
> SunOS has the SVR2/SVR3 era awk.
SunOS-4.1.4 had at least both oawk and nawk, IIRC, just as do all AT&T
System V's since (and including) Release 3.1 (1987 according to my
release notes). There might even have been another version in the XPG
package too....
As I've mentioned for SunOS-5.6, "awk" as a synonym for "oawK" even
though the original release notes and manual page promises that it will
replace the old version in the next major release (which surely 4.0,
from which SunOS-5.x is derived, was). It's amazing how badly technical
can sometimes bastardise things. Take for example this quote from the
nawk(1) manual page on SunOS-5.6:
The /usr/bin/nawk and /usr/xpg4/bin/awk utilities execute
programs written in the nawk programming language, which is
specialized for textual data manipulation.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>